1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a radio frequency source.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are commercial examples of devices that use the gyromagnetic principle. They utilize spheres of special ferrite material. The spheres are very small and the devices, called Yittrium Iron Garnett (YIG) oscillators, are limited in power output up to a few tens of watts. There are other tunable microwave frequency sources that are based on ferrite materials called Non Linear Transmission Lines (“NLTLs”). NLTLs use a different physical mechanism to produce the microwave radiation. While an NLTL has similar frequency agility, they can not produce frequencies above 2.0 GHz. This is a fundamental limitation of the materials and designs used in NLTLs.
The present invention is directed to resolving, or at least reducing, one or all of the problems mentioned above.